Einstein

By Peter Smith

Albert Einstein re-wrote the textbooks of science in 1905: physics since has been little more than a series of footnotes to the theories of a 26-year-old patent-office clerk. Einstein’s science and emotional life come together in this vivid portrait of a rebellious and contradictory figure, a pacifist whose legendary equation E=mc2 opened scientists’ eyes to the terrible power within every atom. ‘To punish me for my contempt for authority,’ he lamented, ‘Fate has made me an authority myself.’

‘Peter Smith writes with admirable simplicity….this is a marvellous book’

Daily Telegraph

‘Einstein’s complicated character is all here. He was a world celebrity, influential on high events and policies. But there was more to him than science and violin playing: his life as a young man includes episodes that would have been pounced on by today’s tabloids . . . Concise, complete, well produced and lively throughout . . .’

Roy Herbert, New Scientist

Peter Smith regularly reviews science books for the Guardian, and has written for the Independent, the Financial Times and the Times Literary Supplement and other journals. In 1997 he was awarded a prestigious British Academy three-year Postdoctoral Fellowship, an award made each year to a handful of outstanding young scholars. He teaches at University College London where he is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Science and Technology Studies Department. His first book, Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 1780-1955, was published in 2000 and according to one reviewer ‘puts much other work in so-called cultural studies to shame.’